


the road not taken (looks real good now)

by nicole_writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alone for the holidays? How about alone together, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music Conservatory, Childhood Friends, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Piano, friends to ????, gratuitous music references, kind of friends with benefits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 03:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30082875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes
Summary: “So,” he says as he starts slowly playing through the opening of a St. Cichol’s Day carol, “why aren’t you going home for the holidays?”“I could ask you the same question,” she counters. “Why are you in a basement practice room on the last day before campus closes for the winter?”—music conservatory au, written for the sylvgrid evermore project
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 25
Collections: Sylvgrid Evermore Project





	the road not taken (looks real good now)

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is my first (of two!!) contributions to the lovely sylvgrid evermore project where we wrote 15 fics based off the 15 songs from Taylor Swift's album "evermore". big thanks to ash for being a lovely beta <3
> 
> this was not my original idea, but once that one spiralled out of control, I chose to restart and still ended up with something longer than I was expecting, but, well, it also happens to be the conservatory au that i "am never going to write ever". 
> 
> my contribution is for **track 4: tis the damn season**. please check out the [event Twitter](https://twitter.com/SylvgridTs) or the AO3 collection to see all the other works people are creating (or check out [my Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37), that would be cool too)

As soon as the Theory exam is over, Sylvain heads to a practice room. His head hurts from the advanced modulation questions and he doesn’t even want to think about how badly he probably botched the last couple of questions. Just because he can read the music doesn’t mean he wants to explain the composer’s choices of certain chord transitions or key signatures. 

He scans his keycard on the lock by the door and lets himself into the practice room. He drops his messenger bag off his shoulder, not even bothering to get his sheet music out as he pulls the piano’s bench out. Sylvain settles quickly, lifting the dust cover off the keys and slowly pressing his index finger against the G above Middle C. 

The soothing, familiar ring of the piano chases away his lingering stress. He lifts his left hand, slowly aligning it above the keys, and presses down. His right hand follows in the smooth arpeggiated motions and a faint smile curls up his lips. He changes the chord in his left hand and moves the melody in his right, building into the beginning of Moonlight Sonata. 

It’s one of his favourites. Arguably, compared to some of the concertos he has learned since moving to Derdriu, it’s not particularly difficult, but it is a timeless classic and he still knows almost the entire first movement off by heart. 

He lets his instincts guide him as he plays into the middle of the movement, his eyes drifting shut. Occasionally he stumbles on a note or a chord but he plays through it. It’s nice to be able to treasure the performances that aren’t being graded when he can. There is no audience here waiting with clipboards to dock him marks for the angle of his wrists or a harsh critic just waiting to comment on the length of his legato notes. 

He gets about five minutes into the song—just far enough that he’s lost in it—when he is rudely interrupted by the door to his practice room unlocking and opening suddenly. 

Sylvain stops playing immediately, twisting on the bench to catch sight of the intruder. He manages to catch a glimpse of her before she can dart out of the room, her face flushing bright red. He stumbles up, lunging to grab the door before she can pull it closed between them. 

“Wait!” he says. 

Slowly, he peels open the door and comes face-to-face with a blushing young woman carrying a violin case. She takes a sharp breath in and brushes aside a lock of her short blonde hair, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. 

“Sorry,” she says immediately. “I didn’t think anyone would be down here. I didn’t look before opening the door. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Of course, of all the people he’s going to run into today, it has to be someone he used to know incredibly well. “It’s okay, Ingrid,” he says. “Moonlight Sonata’s neither my hardest nor my favourite piece.”

She finally lifts her gaze and when Sylvain gets a good look at the sharp greens of her eyes he is immediately shot back to six or seven years ago where they had had staring contests over the dining room table at an old family friend’s house.

“Hi,” he greets awkwardly.

“Hi, Sylvain.” Ingrid sounds embarrassed. Even though they know each other—and have for an arguably very long amount of time—it’s been a while since they’ve actually spoken. They’re in different years, focused in different specialties with their own groups of friends. Sylvain has hardly _seen_ Ingrid in years. He’s sure, however, that despite the two-year age gap, Ingrid knows exactly what he has been up to since he left Fhirdiad. She’s always been that way.

His gaze drops to her violin and the logo etched into the clasp on the case. He whistles. “A Charon? Wow.”

Ingrid’s weight shifts. “Unfortunately, some of us can’t rely on the school to provide us with our instruments.”

Sylvain laughs at that. “You should have seen my father’s face when my mother bought me my latest piano back home.” 

She almost smiles. Almost. The word ‘home’ seems to make her uncomfortable. He doesn’t blame her on that front. 

Sylvain still has one hand planted on the door above her and she hasn’t taken more than two steps away from the practice room. If she’s down here, especially with her instrument, she’s probably here to practice. There’s something about her posture and demeanour that makes him think that practicing is the last thing she wants to do. 

As music students, they all do it. Endlessly, at times. But, sometimes, the last thing you want to do is practice. 

Ingrid might be an old friend, but Sylvain’s not one for turning down the opportunity to impress a pretty girl. He drops his hand and opens the door wider, a clear invitation for her to step into the room with him. 

“If you don’t have any pressing things to practice, would you like to stay?” 

She gives him a slightly disbelieving look. “What? So you can add another notch to your belt of sad women seduced in a practice room? No thanks.”

He raises an eyebrow. Her body language has shifted from embarrassed to offended incredibly quickly. Her words betray her own feelings much more than she probably had intended. 

“Well, if I remember correctly, didn’t all the third-year exams finish almost five days ago? Therefore, if you’re still in Derdriu and haven’t rushed home for St. Cichol’s Day like everyone else, it must mean that you’re not going back to Fhirdiad.” He meets her gaze. He’s not judging but not backing down either. 

Ingrid sighs. “What does it matter, Sylvain?”

“You said yourself that you were sad.” When she opens her mouth to protest, he holds up his hands. “Hey, those were your words, not mine.” 

She glances past him to the piano. “And you were what? Just going to play me more Mozart to try and distract me?”

He shrugs. “I was thinking Chopin, actually. He’s my personal favourite.” The deflection seems to catch her off guard. Sylvain laughs a little louder. “You didn’t really think I would ever defile a practice room, did you?”

Ingrid purses her lips. “I’ve heard enough stories about you that, yeah, maybe I questioned you for a moment.”

Sylvain shakes his head. “Maybe back home I would have, but not here.” He looks back at the Hrym piano in the middle of the practice room. “This one is worth almost 100 grand. I wouldn’t dare mess with it. It would go against my every belief as a classically trained pianist.”

He finally gets a laugh out of her for that one.

“Alright,” she says, stepping into the room. “Only because I would love a distraction right now. I’m sorry for doubting your honourable intentions.” 

Sylvain grins and reaches out, taking her violin case and setting it on the ground. Surprisingly, Ingrid doesn’t bat his hand away when he takes her arm, guiding her to the bench. He sits down on the left side and slides the bench off-centre so that she can sit next to him without displacing him from the centre of the keyboard. 

The stupid, prideful part of him flares with the opportunity to show off and he launches into the first few bars of Fantasie Impromptu before Ingrid scoffs loudly and elbows him. He stops abruptly and smiles at her.

“What? I did say I was going to play Chopin.”

“I know how good you are, Sylvain. You don’t have to show off to me.”

She would know about his talent. She had hated him for it when they were young. They had been two music students seeing the same theory teacher and taking lessons at the Fhirdiad Music Emporium for as long as Sylvain could remember. But while music and rhythm had always been second nature to him, Ingrid has worked much harder to get to where she is than he has. 

But he also knows how good she is. He knows how that even though she’s just a third-year student, she also plays Second Chair violin in the Conservatory’s Chamber Orchestra. Ingrid is far from the squeaky, young violinist he had known in Fhirdiad when they were kids. 

Of course, since he left the city, they’ve fallen more than a bit out of touch. He knows her history and that she’s a very talented violinist, but her personal life is a mystery to him. He, on the other hand, has enough of a reputation that Ingrid still knows most, if not all, of his tricks. 

“So,” he says as he starts slowly playing through the opening of a St. Cichol’s Day carol, “why aren’t you going home for the holidays?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she counters. “Why are you in a basement practice room on the last day before campus closes for the winter?” 

Sylvain chuckles, reaching over her to play a trill in an upper octave. “My father’s an asshole. If I don’t have to go home, why would I? I’m happier here.”

She is quiet for a moment. “My father died a few months ago,” she confesses. 

Sylvain abruptly stops playing. “What?” He slowly turns his head towards her.

Ingrid’s shoulders tremble and she looks up, squinting into the overhead light. “He had pancreatic cancer. It came on very suddenly and the doctors couldn’t do anything about it. We couldn’t even afford the one treatment that might have helped because he insisted that my tuition and my life here were more important.”

“Seiros, Ingrid, I’m so sorry.” He hadn’t heard a thing about her father’s passing. He knows that his father is an up-tight, pretentious dick, but he figures he would have at last heard a whisper of something. It’s frustrating that he hasn’t.

Her head turns away from him as she lifts a hand to wipe her eyes before real tears can form. “How could you know?”

“I shouldn’t have asked then,” he corrects. “Didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

She shrugs. “I’ve never been much for the holiday season anyway.”

“Do you want to go home?” he asks tentatively. “Back to Fhirdiad?”

Ingrid shakes her head. “What? Bum a stay off of a family friend and have to deal with the stiflingness of that whole thing? No thank you.” 

Sylvain slowly reaches down and picks up one of her hands out of her lap. He guides it to the keys of the piano. Ingrid tenses beside him but doesn’t pull away. She presses an E key slowly and the note rings clearly through the practice room. She slowly walks her fingers through a C major scale. It’s nothing special, and not even particularly graceful, but it fills the awkward silence between them for a moment. 

Ingrid starts to withdraw her hand once her thumb presses down the C key but hesitates. “You know, they don’t say good things about you back home,” she confesses. 

Sylvain shrugs. “Whatever. My reputation back there doesn’t bother me. As long as I’m here and doing what I want to be doing, why would I care what a bunch of stuck-up Faerghans think of me?”

Ingrid lifts her hand and Sylvain’s hand slides underneath it. Her palm settles atop the back of his hand and, very carefully, her fist uncurls and her fingers stretch out over his. Sylvain plays a three-note trill and Ingrid’s hand dips with his, almost as if she’s playing the keys through him. 

Carefully and tentatively, like he might ruin everything if he moves too quickly, Sylvain plays the first few notes of Für Elise. He knows the song well enough that he doesn’t have to watch the keys, but the idea of looking somewhere else, like at her face, is more daunting than he would like to admit, so his gaze stays locked firmly on where her hand rests atop his. She slowly lets him play the first few bars of the right hand at one-quarter speed. 

Ingrid’s laugh breaks through the moment. She draws her hand back to her lap and Sylvain stops playing. He looks at her and catches what looks like the barest flash of nostalgia in her eyes. 

“I’ve never been any good at piano,” she mumbles. “My hands were too small as a kid and by the time I picked up a violin, I never needed another instrument.”

Sylvain shrugs. “It’s a handy instrument to know how to play.”

As soon as the pun slips out, she elbows him. He laughs, nearly tipping off the end of the bench. Whatever strange, stilted awkwardness had been hovering between them seems to have subsided. The light-hearted ribbing feels much more comfortable and familiar. 

Somehow, it makes him miss home. That feeling is new. 

“Are you just alone for the break then?” he asks. 

Ingrid shrugs. “My roommate will be back a few days before term starts but until she comes back, I am.”

He’s alone too. He lives alone. He’s always found it easier to take care of a space built for one and his parents were quicker to accept his permanent living in Derdriu once he was living in a place that they deemed respectable enough. 

The words slip out of him before he can catch them. 

“You don’t have to be if you don’t want to.”

Ingrid’s knee digs into the outside of his leg as she twists towards him, her lips curling into a confused frown. “What?”

He swallows. Even though she is Ingrid, this girl he has known forever, she is still a very beautiful girl sitting very close to him in a very intimate space. 

“You don’t have to be alone for the break,” he clarifies.

She blinks slowly, dark lashes fluttering over brilliant green eyes. “What’s the alternative?”

“We could,” he says, unable to stop his gaze flickering over her mouth, “be alone together.”

There is a moment where he holds eye contact with Ingrid. The air in the practice room, despite being perfectly filtered for the sake of the expensive instruments, feels heavy and stifling in that instant. It’s as if someone is playing Tchaikovsky as loud as possible inside of Sylvain’s skull and he can’t even hear his own thoughts over the sound of imaginary piano keys. 

But then Ingrid looks away, turning her head back to face the piano before them and the moment shatters. 

“I’ll be fine, Sylvain.”

He doesn’t reply right away. His immediate reaction is disappointment. He’s not sure what he should have expected from Ingrid. It’s true that they haven’t been close since moving to Derdriu for university five years ago, but a part of him had been hoping that she, a little slice of home, would be interested in having at least something familiar around at this time of year. At the same time, he understands the desire to withdraw and be away. It must be harder for her too since her father is dead, not just an asshole whose child is avoiding them. 

“Alright,” he says quietly. 

He doesn’t stop her when she stands from the bench, takes her violin, and slips out of the practice room with a mumbled farewell just a few minutes later. 

Sylvain sets his hands to the keys and plays an angry E flat Minor chord. 

* * *

Sylvain can't get that evening out of his head. The memory of sitting next to Ingrid on the piano bench clings to him for days. Every time he sits down at his own piano, an Indech electric that cost him a pretty penny of its own right, he thinks of the warmth of her leg next to his and her hand resting atop his.

He’s still thinking about it on the night before St. Cichol’s Day when his apartment buzzer goes off.

Sylvain jolts up from his couch. He had been texting with Hilda mindlessly for the last little bit, but the buzzer brings him back to the reality of the moment. He answers his intercom curiously.

“Hello?”

_“Sylvain?”_

It’s Ingrid. Sylvain stares at the intercom for a moment before running a hand through his hair.

“Ingrid?”

_“Oh, good! I did get the right place. Can you buzz me up?”_

He fumbles for a moment, almost ending the call before he hits the button to grant her entry. “Yeah,” he says, still feeling a bit caught off-guard. “Should be right open. I’m on the sixth floor.”

_“Be up in five.”_

Sylvain doesn’t know what to do with himself for the five confusing minutes that it takes for Ingrid to get from the lobby of his apartment building to his front door. He’s still feeling incredibly perplexed when she knocks and he’s sure it’s written all over his face as he opens the door.

Ingrid stands on his doorstep wearing a dark grey peacoat that’s done up to combat the chilly winds. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold and she’s wearing blue mittens as she holds up a bottle of wine.

“Mind if I come in?”

Sylvain steps back, allowing her entry into his apartment. She takes off her boots and starts unfastening her coat. Sylvain swoops in, scooping the bottle of wine out of her hand as she sheds her coat and then her mittens. Ingrid hangs the coat on the peg and then wanders a few steps further into his apartment, heading towards his kitchen.

Sylvain, now holding the bottle of wine, follows her. She wanders past the bar of his kitchen into the living room and towards his piano. Sylvain stops in the kitchen to place the wine bottle down as he studies her from across the room.

“Nice place,” she comments quietly.

“What are you doing here, Ingrid?” he asks.

She sighs and turns to face him. Her expression is drawn into something guilty and also embarrassed.

“I was lonely,” she admits.

Sylvain nods slowly. He has managed to get that much into his brain somehow, but it doesn’t exactly answer how she has actually found her way to his apartment. She’d been dismissive of his invitation when he had presented it last time. “How did you figure out where I lived?” he asks.

“I remembered that you gave private lessons to a girl on my residence floor, so I looked up your address in the tutoring directory,” she explains.

He blinks. “Alright.”

Ingrid goes back to admiring his piano and Sylvain forces himself to reach into his cupboard for two wine glasses. He undoes the screw-top on the bottle and leaves the wine to air out for a little bit before he pours it. The bottle she’s brought is a red wine from the southern part of the Leicester Alliance. It’s not a high-class bottle like Sylvain’s parents are doubtlessly serving tonight, but it’s not some cheap, student-typical blend either.

As he pours the glasses, Ingrid turns back to him, walking back until she stands across the counter from him. He slides the glass on his left towards her, but she waits until he picks up the other glass to lift hers. She reaches out, tapping their glasses together lightly.

“Happy St. Cichol’s Eve,” she says quietly.

He echoes her toast and sips from his glass. He watches her over the top of the glass, appraising and admiring. Ingrid doesn’t seem to notice his stare, nor does she seem to pay him any particular attention, so he eventually moves around the counter towards the couch in his living room.

“Do you want to sit down?”

“Sure.”

She settles onto the far side of the couch as she continues to sip her wine almost daintily. Sylvain sets his down once he’s halfway through the glass, and tips his head, watching her a bit more openly now.

“So, you’re just here because you were lonely?”

Ingrid frowns. “You did offer,” she points out.

He shrugs. “I guess I did, but you blew me off. Guess I wasn’t expecting you to go back on that.”

Her lips tighten and she sets her own glass down. “I guess I didn’t realize how much I needed a distraction until today arrived. I can leave if I’m inconveniencing you.”

Sylvain chuckles. “No, don’t worry. I offered. You’re right.” He pauses. “And, for the record, I get it. Sometimes it doesn’t feel as hard until the weight of the moment is right on top of you.”

After that weight is lifted, the conversation starts to leak out more casually. Sylvain talks about why he’s taking a fifth year—one poor decision in his first year that almost made him fail a required Music History course—and Ingrid talks about organizing the string quartet she’s in as well as about her roommate who is apparently an operatic singer also studying at the Conservatory.

Talking with Ingrid is nice. She’s not judgemental, like so many of the pretentious virtuosos at the Conservatory are. She has an air of authenticity that is distinct to Faerghus. It’s refreshing and it reminds him of all the good things about being at home.

Somehow, Ingrid’s bottle of wine disappears and Sylvain opens another from his cupboard. They only get through half of this one before Ingrid manages to pester him into playing for her. Sylvain insists that they leave the alcohol on the coffee table, far away from where it might damage his precious keyboard, but he does cave to her request.

He’s half-tipsy now, so he’s not quite at the coordination level to play anything particularly challenging, but he plays half of the chorus of one of the pop songs that’s been playing on the radio non-stop until Ingrid bursts out laughing behind him. After that, he does pull out some sheet music and start playing the beginning of Debussy’s Rêverie.

The couch creaks behind him as he focuses, playing the gentle rocking arpeggio in the left hand and the floating melody in the right. Ingrid moves towards him as he plays until she is standing right behind him, almost pressing against his back. Sylvain plays through Rêverie until he fumbles, somewhere around the two-minute mark, and then he slows the dance of his fingers to a stop.

“Still learning this one,” he admits.

Ingrid’s hand lands on his shoulder. He looks up at her as she slowly drifts around the piano bench until she stands next to him between the bench and the keys. She’s smiling faintly and the alcohol-addled part of Sylvain’s brain thinks that she is glowing.

“It’s beautiful, Sylvain,” she says. Her hand glides up, lightly ghosting the side of his face until she brushes aside a piece of his hair that flops almost into his eyes.

His skin tingles under her touch and Sylvain’s right hand immediately leaves the piano and goes to touch her waist. His fingers dig lightly into the material of her sweater as he holds her gaze. Her hand hovers like it wants to cup his face, but she hesitates.

He wants to stand up and pulls her into him, but he doesn’t want to break whatever this quivering tension is. He doesn’t want to startle her back or shatter the moment. She has to come to him.

“Ingrid,” he murmurs.

She creeps closer to him, using a knee to balance on the piano bench beside him. Sylvain’s grip on her sweater tightens. Ingrid’s courage must find her as her fingers trace along Sylvain’s jaw until they reach his chin and then they slide up and over his lips before gliding further across his cheek and over the arch of his cheekbone.

He stays still against her touch but keeps his eyes on hers. He controls his breaths, matching her slow inhales until the silence of the moment wins out and Ingrid’s body hunches towards his.

Her lips are warm when she kisses him. She tastes like wine and spices. Sylvain kisses her back immediately, sliding his hand from her waist to her back to pull her closer. One of her hands cups his face and the other braces against his shoulder.

He lets her lead, matching the movement of her lips slowly and languidly until her tongue presses forward into his mouth and she deepens the kiss. Sylvain pushes back a bit then, wrapping his whole arm around her waist and pulling on her more insistently. Against his mouth, Ingrid lets out a shaky gasp as she nearly buckles downwards. When he keeps tugging, she gives in, resting her weight over him as she perches in his lap.

The whole position atop the bench is awkward, precarious, and makes the muscles of Sylvain’s back burn unexpectedly, so he adjusts forward as he continues to kiss Ingrid. She curls one hand into his hair and breaks the contact of their mouths with a gasp. Sylvain kisses her jaw and then her neck, clinging to her before she can move away.

Ingrid lets out a breathy sigh and arches into him. The motion lets her lean back a little, but the way that Sylvain determinedly kisses across her neck nearly knocks them both off balance. Ingrid lets out a small shriek as her weight tips backwards. Her hips crash into the piano and her hand, flying from his shoulder to the keyboard behind her, makes a discordant sound as it smashes several keys all at once.

Sylvain immediately stops kissing her. He jerks Ingrid forward back quickly enough that they nearly topple off the bench the other way and she spins out of his touch, stumbling onto the bench beside him to save them both from that fate.

Breathless, he stares at her. Her cheeks are flushed and her lips are swollen. Her sweater has been pushed up at the waist and there is already a red, flushed spot on her neck that will likely bloom into a bruise tomorrow.

A deep hunger flares in Sylvain. It’s not the same heat that he feels with any random girl he brings back to his place. This is heavier, warmer, and all-encompassing. The world could be ending outside his apartment and he wouldn’t know because all he can see is Ingrid. 

The thread of uncertainty that buds in his chest snaps when he sees the same heat in Ingrid’s eyes. Her lashes flutter slowly and the hand still on the side of his face slips to the back of his neck. Her fingernails press lightly against his skin and Sylvain reads the question in her face before she has to word it: _why did he stop?_

“Piano,” he breathes. “Cost me a lot of money.”

Her exhale is through her nose. It is some strange combination of fond and annoyed. Her finger twirls through the short hair at the base of his neck. “That’s it?” she murmurs. “That’s the only reason?”

He lets his hand slip under the hem of her sweater, wandering until he finds the warm skin of her side. “Plus,” he continues, “I think this will be more comfortable if we continue it elsewhere.”

The smile that pulls at the corner of her mouth dismisses the last of his doubts. “Okay.”

* * *

Sylvain wakes the next morning with Ingrid’s hair in his mouth. He twists against her until he can shake his head and free himself. Ingrid stirs against him when he moves, letting out a low groan and shoving her face into his shoulder. His left arm tingles as she adjusts. He’s mostly on his back but Ingrid half on top of him and his arms are looped around her waist.

A smile plays at the corner of Sylvain’s mouth as he rubs a circle into the back of her hip with one hand. 

Ingrid hums and seems to wake fully under his touch. One of her legs digs between his but her head pulls back and up until she’s looking at him. She blinks slowly and stifles a yawn. 

“Morning,” he greets. 

Ingrid nods slowly. She shifts again, propping herself up on one elbow to give herself a better view of him. Sylvain’s far from self-conscious as her eyes track down to where the sheet covers his torso, especially given the performance that they’d put on last night. 

“Happy St. Cichol’s Day,” she mumbles in response. 

He huffs. “Is it weird to say I almost forgot?”

Ingrid groans. “Can you work that magic on me? I really don’t want to be thinking about it.”

Sylvain tugs on her waist until she dips towards him and he presses a chaste kiss to the side of her mouth. Ingrid’s hands fumble for his shoulders and she pushes him back down against the mattress. Sylvain blindly pushes the sheets away and Ingrid climbs over him, leaning into another kiss. 

Sylvain’s hands wander from her waist to the outsides of her thighs and Ingrid hums, kissing him again. She breaks the kiss when he tries to deepen it and leans back, her expression screwed up and absolutely adorable. 

Sitting back just above his hips, she pats his shoulder. “Morning breath,” she mumbles. 

Sylvain laughs. “Fair enough.” He draws a circle on the meat of her thigh. “You hungry? We can order delivery or something.”

She blinks, obviously perking up at the mention of food. “Oh? Is anything open?”

Sylvain shrugs. “I’m sure the Nabatea on the corner is open. They’re always open.”

Ingrid nods. “Then yes, I’d love a full breakfast spread.”

“A full spread?” he gasps in mock outrage. “What do you think of me? That I’m made of money?”

Ingrid lifts a hand and rubs it through his hair as her smile slips into a smirk. “Am I wrong?”

Sylvain grabs her hand and drags it down to his mouth where he kisses the palm gently. “No,” he agrees. “Now, why don’t you get off of me so that we can actually order food.”

Ingrid contemplates for a minute, but then she rolls her hips over his and Sylvain groans, his head thudding back against the pillow. “And if I don’t move?”

“If you do, we can brush our teeth, order food, and then I’ll spend the rest of the hour it will take for the food to get here doing everything that I did to you last night times ten,” he bargains, his hand flexing on her hip.

Her eyes brighten at his promise. She steals one last kiss before slipping out of the bed and snagging the top sheet with her as she goes. Sylvain mourns his now un-made bed as his eyes track Ingrid’s form across his room as she vanishes from sight into the bathroom. 

He takes a slow breath and shakes his head. “Fuck,” he mumbles to himself. 

Then he reaches for his phone to order her literally whatever she wants. 

* * *

Ingrid ends up staying at his place all day. They eat takeout, roll around in his bed, shower and play cards until it’s evening and Sylvain digs out a frozen pizza to make for dinner. While it bakes, Ingrid sits at his piano and pokes at the keys until he wanders over to sit next to her. 

He teaches her the melody of Heart and Soul and then plays the chords and counter to her in the left hand until she fumbles and laughs. Her elbow flies out and nearly nudges him off the side of the bench and Sylvain just grins at her, stealing a kiss on her cheek in response. 

Then she makes him play for her again. 

He plays the unfinished sonata that he’s been working on composing for one of his classes. By the time that he lifts his left hand from the keys to steal a glance at her, Ingrid’s eyes are wide and impressed. 

“That’s beautiful,” she says. 

He shrugs. “I’m sure if you had your violin here you could put me to shame.”

She rolls her eyes. “I disagree.”

“I’ve also had two more years of Conservatory training,” he adds. 

Ingrid steps closer to him and his arm outstretches to loop around her waist without him thinking. She kisses between his eyes. “I guess so, but you’re still very talented Sylvain.”

“Wasn’t trying to deny that,” he says. “Just saying that you’ll probably be better than me when you get here.”

Her laugh is a breathy huff and he can’t help himself as he lets his hand drift down and bunch up her borrowed shirt. He scoots the fabric up over her hip until he can get a handful of warm skin. Ingrid hasn’t bothered to put pants on and she lets out a small squeak when he cups her ass. 

He’s about to try and coax her into a kiss when the oven dings behind them. Ingrid, as motivated by food as she was when she was a kid, smacks his hand down and spins out of his touch, heading for the kitchen. Sylvain mourns the view as his too-large shirt drops back down over her butt. 

The pizza smells good, and he’s not going to pretend that he hasn’t worked up an appetite today already. He wanders into the kitchen as she slips on oven mitts to take it out and his attention is caught by the buzzing phone on the countertop. 

“That’s yours, right?” he asks. 

Ingrid jumps a bit. “Oh! Yeah, it is.” She places the pizza down on the top of the stove and sheds the mitts, grabbing her phone. “It’s my roommate. I’ll be right back.”

Sylvain nods and lets her disappear around the corner towards the front door where she answers the phone. He opens the drawer on his right and pulls out a large knife and begins slowly cutting the pizza, a part of him trying to listen distantly for Ingrid’s voice to see if he can hear her talk on the phone. 

She’s not dressed which means she can’t actually leave his apartment for privacy so he can hear it when she starts talking to her roommate. 

“Hi, Dorothea.” There’s a pause as her roommate replies and then Ingrid continues talking. “No, I’m alone at our place. Nothing to worry about, I told you. I chose to stay.”

Sylvain pauses cutting the pizza when he hears her lie. Sure, he understands not wanting to admit that she’s not at her apartment, but he’s not sure why she’s claiming to be alone. He wants to listen further, but the oven beeps aggressively at him once more and he sighs, turning off the timer and then the heat itself. 

By the time he finishes that, Ingrid is rounding the corner back into the kitchen, having concluded her phone call. 

“Mmmm,” she says, “the pizza smells good.”

Sylvain hesitates. “You told her you were alone at your place,” he says. He has no reason to hide the fact that he overheard her. 

Ingrid’s smile slips. She places her phone on the countertop. “Sylvain, please, it’s just that I don’t need Dorothea butting into every part of my life. If I told her I was with someone she would have been mad because I didn’t want to go with her to visit her family for the break.”

He frowns at that. “So, you turned her down to be alone and then you came over here yesterday anyway?”

“Dorothea’s an orphan,” Ingrid says bluntly. “She lives with her godmother and neither of them has a lot of money and I didn’t want to put any unnecessary stress on them over the holidays. Besides, I actually did intend to be alone today.”

She crosses the kitchen towards him, stepping into his space. Her hands curl in the waistband of his sweatpants and she lightly steps on his toes. Sylvain’s chin dips towards her before he can stop himself, but he doesn’t quite kiss her. 

It’s not like he really has room to be upset with Ingrid. They haven’t really been friends in years. They reconnected a few days ago as a fluke and he had been the one to invite her over. If she just wants him for a booty call, he can’t really complain. Still, the atmosphere in his apartment all day hasn’t really felt like a booty call. 

It’s felt more like the tumultuous beginning of something else. 

The way that she looks at him when he plays piano, the way that she sighs his name when he kisses her, or the way that she snorts and laughs when he says something particularly stupid. None of that feels like it’s a one-and-done.

“Okay,” he says to her instead because letting it go is the easy thing to do. He pulls away from her a bit, reaching to an upper cupboard to grab a few plates. “Let’s have some pizza.”  
  
Ingrid smiles, apparently buying that he’s over whatever weirdness had bubbled up. “And then we can watch that movie you mentioned last night,” she suggests. “Would be a good way to end the night, yeah?”

He doesn’t argue and simply passes her a plate in the meantime. 

* * *

The day after St. Cichol’s Day, Ingrid slips out before Sylvain wakes up. She does leave him a note with a scrawled-out phone number as well as a small, doodled heart. Sylvain waits only twenty minutes after he wakes up before he loses the battle with his impulse control and sends her a text. 

He makes some stupid, lewd joke, and she replies with an angry face, but at least he knows that it’s really her number. 

The rest of the day, spent alone and without Ingrid, Sylvain feels sluggish. His apartment feels strangely empty without her laugh or her silhouette in front of the window. His mind is static no matter what he tries to do. TV turns to white noise, his hands cramp over piano keys, and the idea of food is entirely unappetizing. 

It’s infuriating how much of his mind she occupies for someone who has been out of his life for so long, but it’s almost as if now that he knows her again, he can’t get her out of his head. 

It’s not fair to say that he has feelings for her, because he doesn’t know. They’ve spent a whole two days together and even if she has made him feel really good, it’s not fair to call that enough of a basis for a relationship. Sylvain has never been any good at relationships. He’s also not about to pressure Ingrid—a young woman with her whole future ahead of her—into a relationship with him. He’s not even sure he could let himself distract her further. So much of their careers will depend on how well they finish in school.

He’d never be able to forgive himself for ruining that chance for himself, much less for someone else. Especially not if he _actually_ has feelings for Ingrid. 

He’s flopped on his couch when the sun sets and he almost misses it when his phone buzzes under his leg. Twisting awkwardly, Sylvain snatches the device before it can slip between two couch cushions and holds it up towards his face. 

Ingrid has texted him again. 

Her first text is a photo that has Sylvain bolting up off the couch and nearly toppling to the ground on his ass. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, unable to tear his eyes off of the photo on his screen. It is _far_ from what he would have expected from Ingrid, but the message that follows it, an address, makes a lot more sense. 

Still, the dark green lace is going to make his brain self-destruct. 

Sylvain stumbles towards his front door, already calling a Pegasus to take him to Ingrid’s apartment before he even has his shoes on. 

* * *

Sylvain is alone in bed in the morning. Ingrid’s bed is close to the window and even on the far side of the bed, Sylvain can feel the chill of the morning through the glass. He swings his legs over the side of the bed as he sits up, yawning to himself. His underwear and sweats are easy enough to find, but his shirt is conspicuously missing. 

He peeks under the bed but still doesn’t find it, so he gives up and walks out of Ingrid’s bedroom into the common area of her apartment. Her roommate is still out of town, but the place is tiny and much messier than Sylvain had expected from someone as meticulous as Ingrid. 

Ingrid is sitting on the couch, flipping through a Baroque History textbook with a cup of coffee in one hand. Her legs are tucked up and Sylvain can’t help but notice that she seems to have commandeered his shirt. He stops before he’s fully in the room, pausing to lean against the doorway as he admires her. 

It takes her a minute to notice him, but she jolts when she does, almost spilling coffee on herself. Sylvain watches the surprise ebb away as she sighs and reaches out, placing her mug down onto the table so that she doesn’t actually dump coffee everywhere. 

“Good morning,” he greets. He nods to the textbook. “Getting an early start?”

She shrugs. “It’s going to be one of my busier classes next semester. I’ve already started the pre-reading for Theory and Composition, but Baroque is,” she trails off, waving a hand. 

Sylvain nods. He knows exactly what she means while talking about Baroque music. It’s different enough from Classical which makes it incredibly difficult to play if you’re not used to it. He will, most of the time, take a Classical piece with homophony over a Baroque one with monophony any day. 

“It was a tough class,” he confesses, “but I think you’ll be okay.” He walks a bit closer to her and Ingrid dumps the textbook onto the couch beside her, standing up to meet him. 

It feels natural to reach out for her—to slide one hand to her waist and around the small of her back and to let his other find the back of her head. It feels like the most familiar thing in the world to press a light kiss to her lips when she rocks up to meet him as her hand rests on his bare chest. 

It’s the kind of familiarity that is the stuff talked about in storybooks. It’s a weird sensation, especially since this _thing_ between him and Ingrid is so new. Honestly, Sylvain’s not sure how much of it is actually real and how much is just fabricated out of a desire not to be alone at this time of year. 

The thought makes him frown before he can push it away. Ingrid catches the frown before he can wipe it away and her hand slips down his chest to rest just above his hip. Her lips press together and she tilts her head to the side. 

“Are you okay?” she asks him. 

Sylvain studies her. She’s wearing his shirt and her hair is mussed from both sleep and their activities the night before. Her green eyes are bright this morning and she is beautiful. This is Ingrid in a way that he never knew her as a child. This is a vulnerable Ingrid and one that looks younger and more innocent than she actually is. 

“What are we doing, Ingrid?” he asks. The words slip out before he can stop them. He wants to shove them back inside his head—to bury them and hide them away so that he doesn’t have to confront the consequences of their actions in the last half-week.

She blinks slowly and the easy, relaxed expression on her face dissolves. “I—” she tries to answer, but he sees the way the words fail her because, like him, she’s not sure what this means. 

Sylvain steps away from her. He waves for her to move to the couch and she does. He sits next to her but makes sure to stay just far enough away that they’re not touching. He needs the space to think clearly. 

“I like being around you,” he says. “I don’t want you to think that I don’t. You make me feel lighter and happy. It’s a nice feeling.”

“I like being around you too,” she agrees. “It’s easy. Maybe it’s because we used to know each other really well, but I don’t feel like I have to pretend to be some high-brow, perfectionist around you. I guess it feels like we’re both being real together instead of whatever goes on in Performance and Review.”

It’s a good way of putting it. Despite the camaraderie that develops being around people and playing with them for so many years, it’s undeniable that Derdriu Conservatory fosters pretty intense competition. 

“I’m sure you can tell, but I’ve never really been one for relationships,” Sylvain admits. The way that her shoulders tense at the word ‘relationship’ tells him that the idea is as uncomfortable to her as it is for him. 

The label, and the connotations that would come with it—expectations, money, commitment—are things that weigh down whatever they are currently sharing. In a lot of ways, Sylvain would rather have no labels or anything on their relationship because it means that there is no weight to it, but at the same time, if they leave it hanging in limbo he’s afraid of what he’ll do. 

He’s had very few good relationships in his life before and most of them have fallen apart as a result of self-sabotage. Thanks to his parents and his brother, Sylvain has grown up to be _excellent_ at ruining all of the good things in his life. He doesn’t want to do that again here. 

But he also doesn’t want this thing to get in the way of everything else that he’s been working towards in the five years at the Conservatory. 

“It’s only been like two days,” Ingrid mumbles, a poor attempt to deflect him. 

“And you’re going to say that we don’t have a connection?”

A pause. “No.”

Sylvain looks at her, taking in the crease of her brows and the curl of her blonde hair where it is tucked behind her ear. “So, what do you think?”

She takes a deep breath, staring at the coffee table. “I am, and always will be, a very career-focused person. School is hard. It’s absolutely back-breaking and it takes up all of my time, it feels like. I just don’t know if I can handle taking on something that’s,” she pauses, waving a circle with one hand, “whatever this is. I don’t know if I’d be willing to sacrifice my future career for this, Sylvain.”

Her confession, surprisingly, eases his mind. They’re of the same mindset. For both of them, it is not an option to set aside everything that they’ve been working for through all this. Music careers require dedication and one’s full attention. Starting one requires more effort than physically possible. Trying to balance that energy with keeping a good relationship would be brutal. 

Especially if they factor in the unintended competition. It is never a good thing to be jealous of a partner’s success, but Sylvain knows Ingrid well enough to know that they could both fall victim to that trap, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. They’d felt it as kids and they could definitely feel it as adults. 

He reaches for her hand. His fingers nudge, slowly and carefully, under where her hand rests on her bare thigh. His hand slips under, palm-down at first, and he squeezes her leg lightly before turning his hand over. Ingrid is the one to lace their fingers together and then she brings her other hand over to trace the lines of his fingers as they point towards her wrist. 

“I don’t want to ignore this, Ingrid,” Sylvain confesses quietly. “I think that there is something between us. I think that maybe there might have always been, but we were too young before. Being with you is so much easier than it has ever been with anyone else.”

His heart wants to take hold of Ingrid’s and to tie it to his forever. He could. He knows, even by the way that she holds his hand, that he could love her forever. But, honestly, he’s not sure that he should. 

“I don’t want to let you go, but I don’t want to tell you to stay,” she replies simply. 

He gets it, because he wants to stay. He wants her to tell him to stay. But he also wants to leave. He wants to go back to where he was a few weeks ago when Ingrid was only a passing thought every month or so. He wants to go back to the point where he could play Chopin and Lietz for the romance of the music, not for the way that it makes him think of Ingrid’s soft curves and her mouth against his. 

Sylvain takes a deep breath and tightens his grip on her hand. “I don’t think I could even if you asked. And, honestly, I think that’s what we need. I think it would be too much too quickly.”

Sylvain used to pride himself on being fast and loose with romance. He never got attached and it never clung to him the way that it stuck with a lot of his hook-ups. But, with Ingrid, it’s like something has sunk talons into him. It feels like something is missing when he’s away from her, but it also hurts to be close because it’s as if the grip she holds over him is taking away the space for anything else. 

“What if,” she murmurs, “we try this thing until term starts. And then we take a break during school so that we can both focus.” Her eyes lift from their joined hands and her face turns towards him. Sylvain’s heart skips a beat at the slow flutter of her eyelashes. “And then, maybe, we can try being together when no one else is around.”

She’s talking about the summer term when everyone will be off teaching private lessons back in their hometowns and he’ll be playing as many wedding gigs as he can get hired for as well as auditioning for professional groups. His life only gets busier once summer starts, but maybe school won’t feel so suffocating. Maybe they’ll be able to make it work. 

“And you want this? It’s not just because I’m asking?” He tries and fails to keep the tremor out of his voice because he wants this with Ingrid more than he has wanted anything in a long time, but he wants her to want it too. He wants them to be good together, not just easy. 

Ingrid’s leg tucks up and she turns her whole body towards him. She nods. “I’m sure.” Her hand drops his and finds its way to the side of his face. “It gives us more time to figure each other out.” A faint smile tugs at her lips. “You’re not the same person you were when you left Fhirdiad.”

“Neither are you.” 

Her thumb brushes across the bottom of his lower lip when he says the words. She’s still smiling, so he figures he hasn’t done anything wrong. He does feel better about everything now that they’ve had whatever kind of relationship talk this conversation can count as. He’s also feeling much more awake than he was five minutes ago. 

His skin tingles where she touches and he turns his face to kiss at her fingers. “So,” he says, “if I make a stupid joke about wanting to show you all the things I’ve learned since leaving home, would that get us back in your bed?”

Ingrid laughs breathily. “Maybe,” she admits, “but only if you get out of here by five since my roommate is supposed to call me then.”

He raises an eyebrow and glances at the clock in her kitchen. It’s just before eleven in the morning. “That’s a whole six hours,” he points out.

Ingrid’s smile turns a little wicked. “Never thought you’d turn down a challenge.” 

He kisses her. The rest of the conversation and discussion can be a later problem. 


End file.
